from The Guardian
"The development of low-carbon energy is progressing too slowly to limit global warming, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Wednesday.
"With power generation still dominated by coal and governments failing to increase investment in clean energy, top climate scientists have said that the target of keeping the global temperature rise to less than 2C this century is slipping out of reach. …"
from Postmedia News
"Four months after it was passed by the House of Commons, a bill that would require labour unions to disclose detailed financial information, including how much is spent on political activities, has run into opposition in the Senate.
"Bill C-377 is at second reading in the Senate and has already received a negative welcome from a Tory senator. On Tuesday, the Liberal leader in the Senate went a step further, saying the bill, with its 'stunning shortcomings and its horrendous drafting,' should be defeated by the upper chamber. …"
from the Canadian Health Coalition
The Canadian Health Coalition issued an urgent alert to Canadians in light of today’s news that the Harper Government is terminating its funding of the Health Council of Canada.
“This announcement signals Harper’s intention to withdraw essential federal leadership from health care. Medicare will not survive the withdrawal of the guardian of national standards and universal access to care for all Canadians regardless of where they live. This could mean the end of Canada’s last and most loved social program,” said Michael McBane, National Coordinator of the Canadian Health Coalition.
from The Independent
"For all its spectacular achievements, the Israel of 2013 is falling short of Zionism’s most basic goal: to make for the Jews a country like any other. Instead Israel has become a state that flouts international law, scorns global condemnation and is increasingly mired in isolation. Israel was supposed to be a safe haven, but now watches its young emigrate to escape conflict and seek normalcy in the US and, in an irony of history, Europe.
At 65, it is hard for people to change their ways. But if Israel is to realise the dream of its founders and become a Jewish democratic state living in harmony with its neighbours, it has no choice but to unlearn the habits of a lifetime. Amid the noise of celebrations in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem today, an ominous question hangs in the air. It is that of Levi Eshkol, Israel’s third prime minister, who stood before his war-hungry generals in 1967 and asked: 'Must we live forever by the sword?' …"
from The Guardian
"In sum, even if the perpetrators of Monday's attack in Boston turn out to be politically motivated and subscribers to an anti-US ideology, it will still be a very rare event, one that poses far less danger to Americans than literally countless other threats. The most important lesson of the excesses arising from the 9/11 attacks should be this one: that the dangers of overreacting and succumbing to irrational fear are far, far greater than any other dangers posed by these type of events. …"
from the New Republic
"Trusting your child with someone else is one of the hardest things that a parent has to do — and in the United States, it’s harder still, because American day care is a mess. About 8.2 million kids — about 40 per cent of children under five — spend at least part of their week in the care of somebody other than a parent. Most of them are in centers, although a sizable minority attend home day cares like the one run by Jessica Tata. In other countries, such services are subsidized and well-regulated. In the United States, despite the fact that work and family life has changed profoundly in recent decades, we lack anything resembling an actual child care system. Excellent day cares are available, of course, if you have the money to pay for them and the luck to secure a spot. But the overall quality is wildly uneven and barely monitored, and at the lower end, it’s Dickensian.
"This situation is especially disturbing because, over the past two decades, researchers have developed an entirely new understanding of the first few years of life. This period affects the architecture of a child’s brain in ways that indelibly shape intellectual abilities and behavior. Kids who grow up in nurturing, interactive environments tend to develop the skills they need to thrive as adults — like learning how to calm down after a setback or how to focus on a problem long enough to solve it. Kids who grow up without that kind of attention tend to lack impulse control and have more emotional outbursts. Later on, they are more likely to struggle in school or with the law. They also have more physical health problems. Numerous studies show that all children, especially those from low-income homes, benefit greatly from sound child care. The key ingredients are quite simple — starting with plenty of caregivers, who ideally have some expertise in child development.
"By these metrics, American day care performs abysmally. A 2007 survey by the National Institute of Child Health Development deemed the majority of operations to be “fair” or “poor” — only 10 percent provided high-quality care. …"
by Wayne Kondro
The Conservative government has informed the Health Council of Canada that its funding will be discontinued with next year’s expiry of the intergovernmental health accords.
The independent national agency has served as the primary accountability mechanism for the 2003 First Ministers’ Accord on Health Care Renewal and the 2004 10-Year Plan to Strengthen Health Care, reporting annually to Canadians about the quality, effectiveness and sustainability of the health care system.
The council was told last week that with next year’s expiry of the intergovernmental health agreements, “there is no longer a need” for it to monitor progress on health care renewal and reform in Canada…
For gunmakers, the political fight over assault rifles and high-capacity pistols is about more than just profits — it's about the militarization of the marketplace and represents a desperate bid by gunmakers to prop up a decaying business. The once-dependable market for traditional hunting guns has fallen off a cliff. To adapt, the firearms industry has embraced a business strategy that requires it to place the weapons of war favored by deranged killers like Adam Lanza and Jared Loughner into the homes and holsters of as many Americans as possible. "They're not selling your dad's hunting rifle or shotgun," says Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center, a top industry watchdog. "They're selling military-bred weaponry."
As recently as 2008, shotguns, rifles and other traditional hunting weapons made up half of all new civilian gun sales in America, according to SEC documents — a brisk billion-dollar business. Today, hunting guns account for less than a quarter of the market, and the hunting industry is forecasting a 24 percent drop in revenue by 2025. Gunmakers are on the wrong side of the same demographic curves that haunt the modern Republican Party. Its customer base is too old, too white, too male and too Southern. According to Gallup, 61 percent of white males in the South own guns today. Nationwide, just 18 percent of Latinos do. "The white males are aging and dying off," says Sugarmann. Flooding the market with battle-ready guns, he says, "is an effort to find one new, shiny thing to sell them."…
from The Guardian
"Summer ice is melting at a faster rate in the Antarctic peninsula than at any time in the last 1,000 years, new research has shown.
"The evidence comes from a 364-metre ice core containing a record of freezing and melting over the previous millennium.
"Layers of ice in the core, drilled from James Ross Island near the northern tip of the peninsula, indicate periods when summer snow on the ice cap thawed and then refroze.
"By measuring the thickness of these layers, scientists were able to match the history of melting with changes in temperature. …"
from the Vancouver Observer
"Opposition to Keystone XL and the oil sands isn't universal among First Nations groups, but is widespread. Many are alarmed and angry at the Harper government's attempts to undermine Aboriginal rights and title to land through Bill C-45, passed last year. Today, pipeline protests is a highly coordinated effort: this January, Aboriginal leaders from both sides of the border have united to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline, forming the treaty to Protect the Sacred in January.
"Alberta's last ditch effort to drum up support for the tar sands in the US really shows how damaged their brand has become," said Ben Powless, a Mohawk from Six Nations in Ontario and co-founder of the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition. …"
